Bush must decide where to take revenge

4:25PM BST 11 Sep 2001

PRESIDENT George W Bush faces the worst crisis the White House has tackled since the Second World War, as scenes not witnessed by Americans since Pearl Harbour were watched live by millions around the globe.

The United States has come under sustained attack for the first time in its history from an enemy who is not a nation, but an unpredictable and unseen terrorist organisation rooted in the complex hatreds of the middle east.

The President has no choice but to strike back - but the key questions are how, and at whom.

The USA has prided itself in the past on robust responses to terrorist assaults on its nationals. But now there is no obvious target for retribution.

A White House Situation Room will have accompanied Mr Bush to Sarasota, on Florida's Gulf coast, as a matter of course, aboard his jet Air Force One taking him, as he thought, to a routine engagement.

Now it will be pressed into action for real as he consults allies - principally Prime Minister Tony Blair and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon - before deciding how America's massive lethal force will be used.

His options are simple, once he identifies his foe, and have been demonstrated in responses to attacks on American targets in the past. Any sponsoring state can expect its capital to be bombed.

American planes used English airfields on their way to bomb Colonel Gadaffi's Tripoli headquarters in 1986 after terrorists acting under his protection bombed a disco in Berlin packed with off-duty US personnel.

Margaret Thatcher gave the go-ahead for British involvement at the request of President Reagan.

President Clinton also ordered strikes against Iraq in 1993 for an alleged plot to assassinate the first President Bush - with cruise missiles hitting Baghdad. Again, the UK approved the American strike back.

Then in 1998 Tony Blair endorsed Mr Clinton's strikes against Afghanistan and the Sudan in retaliation for bombings of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.

George W Bush is sure to follow that pattern. No group can ever be allowed to create such terror across "the greatest country on Earth".

But the President first has to discover who and where his targets are from an intelligence service that failed to predict the carnage inflicted today.